WooSox' Chad Tracy on Red Sox pitcher Quinn Priester: He’s ‘completely and utterly dialed in on everything’
The Red Sox pitching pipeline got a shot in the arm this summer when chief baseball officer Craig Breslow acquired Quinn Priester from the Pirates for Nick Yorke.
Priester made his official Red Sox debut starting against the Rays in the final game of the 2024 season. He pitched five innings and allowed just one run, four hits, and one walk while striking out two.
The right-hander's strong start reaffirms the Red Sox have talented young starting pitching in their system. In addition to Priester, Richard Fitts made four starts in September, recording a 1.74 ERA.
Before being elevated to the Red Sox 26-man roster, Priester spent the summer with the WooSox following the July trade. While pitching for Triple-A Worcester, Priester focused on reworking his mechanics, including his arm angle and adding more weight to rebuild his velocity.
WooSox manager Chad Tracy likes what he saw from Priester, giving him high praise for his hard work both on and off the field since joining the Sox’ system.
“(Quinn) Priester is completely and utterly dialed in on everything,” said Tracy while on the “To the Show We Go” Baseball Podcast. “This guy, he, in my opinion, he spewed, ‘This is how a big league player prepares, and I watched, you know, and other guys watched him because he spent time in the big leagues, right?
“From his nutrition to his weight gain to his weight room work to what he's accomplishing on a given day in a bullpen, like he's going to throw a bullpen. He's going there with a purpose, and a lot of the time the purpose is driven by him internally. This is what I want to do to his start day.
“So listening to him converse with the starting catcher and Dan (DeLucia) and Noah (Junis), the pitching coaches, on how he's going to attack the start, you know, 45 minutes before he walks out there completely and utterly dialed in is how I described that guy. So how that trade is going to work, I don't know. What I do know is we got a guy that takes his career very seriously,” added Tracy.
The WooSox pitching coaches should have gotten their flowers from the media this past season. Their thumbprints are all over many of the Red Sox pitchers that pitched in front of the Fenway Faithful this season. WooSox pitching coach Dan DeLucia immediately began working with Priester following the trade and began to tinker with some of his grips on his pitches while working on shaping his key pitches within his arsenal and attacking his velocity.
“We saw a guy that came over, and the velocity was 92 (mph); that first start and Dan and Noah and Justin Willard, that was the first thing they attacked,” said Tracy. “There's 97 (mph), and there's 96 (mph), and consistently pitching at a higher velocity.
“Quinn's dialed in; he knows he has a plan for everything he does, a purpose; he knows exactly what he needs to do and his plan to make himself better. I'll take my chances with that kind of work ethic. I really was thoroughly impressed by him. So we'll see how it all bears out, right? We have a young pitcher that has a lot of room to grow and, in my opinion, showed a ton of growth in the two and a half months that he got to spend with us.”
In total, Priester made nine starts for Worcester, posting a 1-1 record with a 5.40 ERA in nine outings (nine starts) over 38 1/3 innings. In four September starts in Triple-A, he went 1-0 with a 2.45 ERA (five earned runs over 18 1/3 innings and .197 opponent batting average (13-for-66).
Priester will serve as additional rotation depth for the Red Sox heading into 2025 and likely will start at Triple-A Worcester unless one of the penciled-in starters begins the year on the injured list. In his first couple of months in the Red Sox organization, Priester made tremendous progress, which is a testament to the pitching development program and Priester’s willingness to be coached and developed.
